The seventies were an incredibly creative time for popular arts. Comics and graphic novels of the period have a certain caution-to-the-wind quality. Mercocomic's six part series Hitler is a prime example. It's an amazing tale in which Adolf Hitler successfully escapes Berlin at the end of World War II but is wounded by a bomb blast that induces amnesia. With his face drastically altered and his memory totally obliterated, he becomes a Nazi hunter in the service of the KGB. Of course all this digging around is bound to jog the memory of even an amnesiac, and then there will be hell to pay. Yeah. It's crazy—even crazier than Mercocomic's other offerings starring Che Guevara and John F. Kennedy. You can just hear the discussion going back and forth: “We can't do this.” “Of course we can.” “No we can't.” “I tell you we can.” In the end they did do it, because that was then and popular art consumers would give anything a chance. 1977 copyright on these, with covers by Prieto Muriana.

Since we mentioned in our Kennedypost that Mercocomic had serials about other historical figures, we decided we’d go ahead and share these Spanish Che covers from 1978. The complete run was three issues in the order seen, and the art is once again from the excellent Prieto Muriana, who even worked in a Pietà on cover three. “Hasta siempre, Comandante,” by the way, is a very famous Carlos Puebla song recorded by everyone from Joan Baez to Nathalie Cardone.

Mercocomic re-imagines one of the darkest periods in American history.

A long while back we shared a Spanish cover of the Mercocomic publication Kennedy and mentioned that a series of six appeared in 1977. The same comics were also published in French, so today, inappropriately, we’re sharing those six covers from France with their excellent if unsettling art by Prieto Muriana. Mercocomic published serials of other well known figures, among them Che, Hitler, Mussolini, Don Juan Tenorio Garcia, and Quijote 78. None are strictly factual accounts, but rather re-imaginings of the circumstances and motivations that drove important historical episodes.

Kennedy, as you can probably guess from JFK’s exit on cover one and Lee Harvey Oswald’s dispatching on cover two, deals with events leading all the way up to RFK’s assassination, with the proceedings generously sprinkled with the sex, drugs, betrayal, and hyperviolence you’d expect in an adult comic. Years ago when we first ran across Kennedy you could download all six. Not anymore. But they’re still available for purchase online at reasonable prices and then friends can question your taste for buying them. Luckily that isn’t a problem for us—most everything we own is tasteless.

Above, a mix of ten covers of F.B.I. and F.B.I. Selecciones, published by two Spanish companies, Bruguera and Ediciones Rollán, during the 1960s and early 1970s. Art is by Prieto Muriana and others. Also, you may notice that cover three is modeled after a famous portrait of James Dean, and, though we aren't 100% sure, cover ten, just above, looks like it was based on Monica Vitti.

Here’s a rather disturbing 1977 cover by Spanish artist Prieto Muriana for the first of a six issue comic series about the assassination of John F. Kennedy (which happened forty six years ago today), and the events leading up to his brother Robert Kennedy’s killing. When we first saw this image at Blonde Zombies it made us cringe a bit, which makes it a successful cover, since it’s clearly intended to be an iconoclastic representation of this sad day. After our initial misgivings, we were able to appreciate the artistry involved. But then JFK is before our time. If you're old enough to have personal memories of the event, maybe there's nothing artistic here at all.

The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution is ratified despite heavy conservative opposition. It states that no U.S. citizen can be denied the right to vote because of their gender.

1958—Lolita is Published in the U.S.

Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel Lolita, about a man's sexual obsession with a pre-pubescent girl, is published in the United States. It had been originally published in Paris three years earlier.

1953—NA Launches Recovery Program

Narcotics Anonymous, a twelve-step program of drug addiction recovery modeled on Alcoholics Anonymous, holds its first meeting in Los Angeles, California.

1942—Blimp Crew Disappears without a Trace

The two-person crew of the U.S. naval blimp L-8 disappears on a routine patrol over the Pacific Ocean. The blimp drifts without her crew and crashes in Daly City, California. The mystery of the crew's disappearance is never solved.

1977—Elvis Presley Dies

Music icon Elvis Presley is found unresponsive by his fiancée on the floor of his Graceland bedroom suite. Attempts to revive him fail and he's pronounced dead soon afterward. The cause of death is often cited as drug overdose, but toxicology tests have never found evidence this was the case. More likely, years of drug abuse contributed to generally frail health and an overtaxed heart that suddenly failed.

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